Silical Gel for For Absorbing Water Vapor From Electric Brewing

[OneInTheHand]

Anybody tried it?

I was thinking the two ways would be either

- Actively vent the water vapor coming off the brew pot through the silica gel (for those that can't vent outside)
- Put a false lid on the top of the kettle and just led the beads sit on top.

They have color changing beads that are meant to be around food. A quick google search indicated the price point wouldn't be too high. Plus it looked like you could re-activate the silica gel by putting it in the oven later.

My rough math is for a 5 gallon batch : 1+ gallon of water will be boiled off. Which would be 8+ pounds of water. You'd need about 30lbs of silica gel. Which is a fair amount, but you could replace 10 pounds of it on top throughout the boil if you didn't have the head space. Guessing 30lb is about 4 gallons in volume. Initial cost would be more than the steam slayers. No water waste, but also would have energy waste when silica was re-activated.

Source for estimates:
https://moistureboss.com/orange-silica-gel/
https://www.sorbentsystems.com/desiccants_charts.html

 

[day_trippr]

Have you seen this thread?

Cheers!

 

[OneInTheHand]

Yes. I've read the first post and some of the replies. And the community has adopted it. Just thinking of alternatives that don't require a putting a whole in the kettle and have more than one use.

 

[Rodent]

how fast is that silica gel going to absorb the emitted water vapor? I don't recall it being a near-instantaneous full absorption type reaction

 

[aeviaanah]

Yes. I've read the first post and some of the replies. And the community has adopted it. Just thinking of alternatives that don't require a putting a whole in the kettle and have more than one use.

Hook a wet dry vacuum up just above the kettle

 

[doug293cz]

Silica gel can absorb about 36% of its weight of water. For a typical boil off of 1 gal, you are evaporating 8.33 lb of water. That would require 8.33 / 0.36 = ~23 lb of silica gel per gal of boil off. You can regenerate the silica gel by heating at ~120°C (~250°F), but then you have to do that outside, or you have the same problem as boiling inside.

A steam condenser is hard to beat.

Brew on

 

[RockfordWhite]

How fast does silica gel work? I would think it isn't instantaneous and might not be able to keep up with the boil off...

If you don't want to drill into your pot, get an extra lid and attach steam condenser there